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Wednesday, December 31, 2014

As Red as Blood by Salla Simukka

Lumikki spends much of her time trying to be completely invisible. But when she stumbles on a stash of bloodied money in her school's dark room, she's forced to change her tactics. The kids who found the money know that Lumikki knows their secret and when one of them becomes the focus of a kidnapping attempt, they quickly recruit her in their efforts to find out what's going on. Lumikki's years of practice at going unnoticed are exactly what they need, but her investigation doesn't stay as secret as they'd all hoped.

2014 Debut Author Challenge complete! Not only that, but this is the first read from my Christmas haul. This is Salla Simukka's first (I believe - I hope) US release and the first in a projected trilogy, with book two, As White as Snow, due out in March.

I'm a bit at odds with this one. Overall it was an ok read. It wasn't bad but I wasn't blown away. And I really wanted to be. It is, as far as I can tell, my first Finnish read and it's yet another translated teen read, which I think we need far more of. My biggest issue is with Lumikki herself and the lack of development.

But that's not exactly true either. Lumikki is actually pretty well developed as a character. The author gives us a great sense of her and her quirks: she's a teen who's living alone in a small apartment, something she's facilitated so that she can attend a magnet school in another town; she's also an outsider and there's a definite reason for it, a reason that is again facilitated by Lumikki herself. But in giving us a good picture of Lumikki, it's clear that there's so much more to her that we've not yet seen. Obviously this is because it's meant to be the first in a series - which would make stretching Lumikki's story necessary - so maybe my issue is that I can't move directly onto the next book.

The main plot of As Red as Blood does stand pretty well alone (which also lends to my character issues considering this is an otherwise a complete story on its own). Lumikki is wrangled into a plan that involves tracing a mysterious bag of money that some of her classmates stumble upon after a party. The first thing they have to find out is who the money is intended for. Once they've got that down, they have to figure out where it came from. And that's the biggie because it means infiltrating a local drug ring.

While I admittedly didn't LOVE this one, I am looking forward to reading book two. If I'm lucky, that one will tie up a few things and push me from meh to wow for these.